Kathryn Lopez links to an excellent (no, really) Ross Douthat column that puts into perspective the different lives of a pair of Kennedy siblings.
For abortion opponents, cruel ironies abounded in this sibling disagreement. Because of Eunice Shriver’s work with the developmentally disabled, a group of Americans who had once been marginalized and hidden away — or lobotomized, like her sister Rosemary — was ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life. But because of laws that her brother unstintingly supported, that same group was ushered out again: the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, for instance, is estimated to be as high as 90 percent.
In 1992, Eunice participated in the last significant effort to push the Democratic Party away from abortion on demand, petitioning her party’s convention to consider “a new understanding” of the issue, “one that does not pit mother against child,” but instead seeks “policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers and their children, both before and after birth.” That same summer, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court upheld a near-absolute right to terminate a pregnancy — a decision made possible by her brother’s demagogic assault on Robert Bork five years earlier, which helped doom Bork’s nomination to the court.
I disagree only with Douthat’s claim earlier in the article that Ted deserved the more extended send-off because of his importance as a legislator. If anything, the fact that Kennedy did nothing his entire adult life other than to serve as a U.S. Senator is precisely why any grand celebration of his life is absurd, even if we disregard his other deficiencies. In founding the Special Olympics Eunice did more with her life than her brother did as serving a permanent parliamentarian. There is nothing honorable about serving as a Congressman for half a century. Again, this has nothing to do with Ted Kennedy’s personal failings or his politics. Individuals like Kennedy, Stevens, Byrd, and Thurman – to name but several of the worst offenders – spent inordinate amounts of time in the US Senate. The idea that someone would be a member of Congress for such extended periods of time would have flabbergasted the Framers.
Even had Kennedy shared his sister’s sense of morality when it came to the unborn, his funeral would still not have merited one-tenth the attention it did receive. Unfortunately he didn’t, which makes the unequal attention paid to their deaths all the more difficult to take.
